I strongly recommend you read the pleadings to see why this has t happened, it’s quite clear, and will likely come after Disney is able to respond to those statements of fact.
Legal manoeuvres != being more than a landlord though. Doesn’t matter.
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It’s not quite that simple.
Here’s the claim:
[Dud link deleted]
It’s a combination of claiming Disney had control of the menus, training and so on; that Disney made representations about the safety of the food and/or that the restaurant and its staff were agents of Disney.
In fact, they are.
Here’s their defence:
[Dud link deleted]
Not having anything to do with the restaurant other than being the landlord features pretty heavily.
It would seem they filed the motion to compel arbitration because someone at Disney genuinely thought they are entitled to have this dispute dealt with by arbitration.
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Linkies no worky.
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Well, that sucks.
As does their website.
Try this:
Otherwise through the search function and the 597 selfdriving vehicle training CAPTCHA pages,
https://myeclerk.myorangeclerk.com/Cases/Search
Piccolo v. Great Irish Pubs
They probably just threw every reason that they could think of to get the case thrown out of court against the wall to see what would stick.
It would be hilarious if the case got thrown out of court only for Disney to lose in arbitration, but that never happens because arbiters who rule against the corporations that feed them tend to have very short careers.
The only thing they’ve done to try to get the case thrown out was the attempt to force it to arbitration. They have not, notably, filed a motion to dismiss. What’s in those pleadings is just their defense. If they genuinely believed their only connection to this case was as a landlord, and they had evidence to prove that, they would have filed a motion to dismiss. They did not. Their defense may include an argument that they’re just a landlord, but they apparently know that’s not true, or they would have filed a motion to dismiss, as I and @MagicFox have pointed out.
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Given that the claim against them includes claims on other grounds which will in any event require determination as to facts, is there any point in a motion to dismiss as regards the “we’re only a landlord” defense?
I get that part, and I think it’s pretty clear that something more than a landlord/tenant relationship was at least purported in the way that the resort was marketed, such that a person patronizing the resort could reasonably assume that the resort tenants were backed by Disney (and that Disney was aware of and did not dispel this notion).
But they still can motion to dismiss, can’t they?
I don’t think so. That generally has to be done before the response, and they’ve already filed their response.
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Here ya go. Smarter guy than me.
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Yeah, this was exactly my point, and concurs with another Lawsplainer on the subject I saw earlier. And frankly I’m not surprised, I would fully expect the plantiffs to try and bring Disney into the suit! They’re the ones with the big pockets here, not a couple brothers from Ireland trying to run a restaurant.
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But the video confirms what I said. Disney’s connection to the restaurant is more than just being their landlord.
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Actually it didn’t say that at all, it confirmed they were the landlord, and further that the attempt to bring them into the lawsuit stemmed from them happening to host a copy of the menu on their website (which Disney does for all disney springs restaurants, including chains like Rainforest Cafe and Ghirardelli’s, neither of which it owns either) and that the reason Disney asserted the arbitration requirement was specifically because they mentioned using Disney’s website to look at the menu (the website being a Disney-owned “service”)
As I said in my original post:
Correct, this is on Disney property but not owned or managed by Disney. An outdoor mall is a good analogy here.
Which is literally the analogy mentioned in the video.
As is usually the case, I now further predict that the little guys are going to be the ones screwed over her by this, because now every website that’s ever hosted a copy of a menu that someone could concievably have read an “allergen-friendly” note on is now potentially liable if this becomes precident - while Disney iteself will walk away from this.
I’m a bit torn on Raglan road itself though. While it’s a great restaurant that may well cease to exist from this action, but at the same time - they literally killed someone, that’s got to have consequences. And even if it doesn’t cease to exist this is going to cause even more restaurants to never assert their food is allergen-friendly going forward, making it even harder for those with dietary concerns to actually find anywhere to eat. 
Science needs to hurry up and figure out how to deal with autoimmune diseases already.
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I never said they weren’t the landlord. I said their connection to the case is more than that. And that absolutely is confirmed in the video. The entire basis of the lawsuit is that Disney, on their website, had the restaurant’s menu and a statement that you could talk to the chef about allergy free dietary options. That’s Disney’s connection that forms the basis of the lawsuit, not their status as landlord.
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I never said anything about that? I pointed out that Disney was the landlord. I’m not entirely sure what point you’ve been trying to make here or why you’re so insistent on it, but I don’t think your issue is with me. 
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Dani’s thesis statement was given very clearly a while ago:
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It’s just struck me as odd that so many people keep saying, “Disney is just the landlord.” It’s an irrelevant point. My issue is that stressing that, to me, carries an implication that Disney is only being included because they have deep pockets and that they shouldn’t be in this lawsuit.
nods as was mine!
But that really is what’s happening here. I mean, remove Disney from the equation for a minute - if Yelp had been pulled into the lawsuit because they had a copy of the menu on their website (as provided by the restaurant), I don’t think people would be responding the same way. But that’s essentially what’s happened here, except that in this case Disney also happens to be their landlord.
No, it isn’t. Their liability is appropriate. People place a high level of trust in Disney. That may seem strange to some of us, but I think among the general public, that’s true. So if an average person sees that statement about allergens on Disney’s website, and on a menu hosted on a Disney website, it’s reasonable to trust that statement is correct. And that makes Disney liable.
I’m not sure what you mean about if this would happen for Yelp. If you mean, would the plaintiff sue Yelp? If I were their attorney, I certainly would include them. If you mean people wouldn’t be outraged about the attempt to force the suit to arbitration…no, I think people would still be outraged about that. It probably wouldn’t get as much press, because who gives a shit about Yelp, but I don’t think that changes things much for the plaintiff. Except maybe they do end up in arbitration.
ETA: I just want to reiterate what my original point was. Of course, plaintiffs want to bring whoever has the deepest pockets into a lawsuit. However, you can’t just include a defendant because they have deep pockets. There still has to be some legal argument for that defendant’s liability. And my original point was that if the only connection Disney had to this incident was that they were the restaurant’s landlord, that would be insufficient to bring them into the lawsuit. Maybe you weren’t making that point, but others were, and everyone’s focus on saying “Disney is just the landlord, they don’t own or manage the restaurant” just rubbed me the wrong way because it doesn’t matter. It’s not relevant to this case. That’s all I was saying.
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I think the point I was trying to make here is that, essentially and for all practical purposes, Disney is just a landlord here. A ton of people seem to be cheering on Disney being added to the suit, but I think that’s terrible for the long-term chilling effects likely to happen in this case.
Because they are “essentially” their landlord, and because megacorporations rarely end up affected by this sort of suit, I think that the outcome of being a defendant in this case is could to lead to chilling effects for anyone with even an ancillary relationship with restaurants insisting on no claims of being allergen-friendly being made.
Now, perhaps most folks have never tried to travel with folks with food allergies, but I can tell you straight up that it fucking sucks. Every meal is already this crazy maze of faith, obscure processes and often eating bland, prepackaged crap just to minimize risk. And that’s from the vanishingly small number of restaurants even willing to assume this risk in the first place.
If a case like this for “only” a landlord results in liability transferred to disney, I seriously worry that those without the deep pockets of disney are going to outright require that their tenants not state that they are allergen-friendly to avoid this happening to them.
In the process of saying “yeah! Fuck Disney” I think we are about to see every mall suddenly go from one or two acceptable places for those with food allergies to eat at to NONE, because why asssume that risk now from your tenants?
Too often in these cases everyone forgets that the real victims here are people just trying to have a normal vacation while navigating terrible allergen risks. I believe the unintended consequences of having Disney-as-essentially-landlord attached to this case is about to make that situation way fucking worse for those same people, and its going to happen with people cheering it on the whole way.
This isn’t about legal theories, this is about the little guys getting fucked over again because large megacorps are never, ever the ones who feel the brunt of these sorts of actions.
At minimum, Disney springs is about to become allergy unfriendly. More likely, Disney will wash their hands of this liability entirely across their properties, followed by everyone else. and who suffers? The little people who are trying to have a vacation and navigate this shit.
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